Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on July 10, 2022, 07:59:22 PM

Most exchanges only love profits, and don't care about bitcoin at all. Take Coinbase as an example. Let's even leave out their pro-surveillance, anti-privacy stance and the fact that the sell all their users' data to a variety of government agencies, and look solely at the technical side of things. They supported BIP101, Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic, Bitcoin Unlimited, Segwit2x. Basically every hard fork which would make bitcoin less decentralized and give them more control over it, they supported. They took years to implement transaction batching and spammed the network with hundreds of thousands unnecessary transactions. Then, despite being front and center supporting all the hard fork proposals which would give them more power, they took years to support segwit. Most exchanges are no different. They will promote and support forks and legislation which weaken bitcoin, but give them more control. They will list and shill pump and dumps and scams which give bitcoin a bad reputation by association, but make them profits. And they will censor transactions, contrary to the whole point of bitcoin in the first place, if it means they can keep lining their pockets.

It makes you wonder whether making a new exchange will make things any better or if the new owners will simply become as detrimental to bitcoin's development as the other exchanges.

I don't even see this problem as one about agencies pressuring exchanges anymore, it's more like exchanges doing everything they can to keep their profits high, at the expense of decentralization (even if this includes lending to risky enterprises ang going bust like Voyager and 3AC).

I don't see exchanges as necessary for the support of a cryptocurrency' economy, except as foreign exchange ATMs or as "money transmitters" (as the government calls them). Exchanges cannot fix the price of BTC, because that will either ruin the exchange if they fix it low, or their users will dry up if they fix it too high. They are not miners (i.e. "the decentralized central bank"), so cannot signal or avoid signalling for any activations. So their opposition is mere drum-beating at best.

They also cannot cripple the cryptocurrencies by voluntarilly banning them outright, or their profits will similarly dry up.

So the status of exchanges is that of the unwilling "enabler" of the crypto economy, they cannot overtly withdraw their support so they try to manifest their dislike for it with other means.